Local author, D’Anne Burwell, received three Eric Hoffer Awards for her memoir, Saving Jake: When Addiction Hits Home. D’Anne’s book was published last August and since her first appearance at Menlo-Atherton High School last fall, she has continued to speak frequently throughout the Bay Area telling her story — breaking the silence — about her son’s drug addiction and what can happen to a family trying to navigate the current drug crisis.

“Don’t think that drug abuse can’t happen to you, or to your child, it can happen in any community. It’s all around us. It happened to mine,” D’Anne tells her audiences. She grew up in Menlo Park, raising her two children with her husband in a quiet community in the Silicon Valley.

The Eric Hoffer Award, founded at the start of the 21st century, honors the memory of the great American philosopher Eric Hoffer by highlighting salient writing, as well as the independent spirit of small publishers.

Saving Jake has been awarded the 2016 winner in Memoir, winner of The 2016 First Horizon Award (given for superior work by debut authors), and short-listed as a Grand Prize Award Finalist.